How Do Lobsters Communicate?

You must have encountered lobsters on your dinner table or as a delicious dish at someone’s home or in an aquarium. Lobsters can certainly fascinate by their uniqueness and strange nature.

Crustaceans like lobsters have hard shells, claws, and antennas that look so different from human beings and any other animals surrounding us.

Lobsters Communication – How Do Lobsters Communicate With Each Other?

Despite their distinct nature, humans always try to watch out for similarities and shared experiences with lobsters. We all know that communication is one of the key parts of human life.

Didn’t you ever ask yourself, ‘how do lobsters communicate?’ We will discuss this in this article and you will get to know much more about the unique creature called- lobster.

What is the process in which lobsters communicate with each other?

Researchers suggest that lobsters are not born with vocal cords and so so they don’t have any capability to produce any verbal sounds like talking or screaming. Instead, you will be rather alarmed to know that lobsters squirt pee at each other faces in order to communicate.

They can do this effortlessly since lobsters usually urinate through their faces. The urinary bladder is located underneath the brain of a lobster. There are glands called rossette glands that produce pheromones. Pheromones are chemicals that play a role similar to hormones outside the body of the lobster. Other lobsters use the smell of pheromones to locate each other.

Later on, these pheromones automatically get injected into the lobster’s body through its stream of urine. The urine, which has pheromones mixed within it, is then released through the antennas that lie just below the face of the lobster. The appendages that you find right at the face of the lobster play a role in changing the stream of urine directly towards another lobster that is placed to write opposite it.

So, whenever a lobster pees, it also releases pheromones which vary based on what the lobster tries to communicate. There are times when a lobster just wants to express that it has successfully identified another lobster,  but more often,  the message is about attraction or aggression.

Their unique method of communicating with each other through the pheromones in their urine can look similar to that of dogs. Dogs also mark their territory with the help of their urine and leave messages through the same.

Lobsters usually don’t communicate well with each other. The male lobsters are often seen to be fighting for dominance as they feel they have the first choice to make on a mate. In fact, it is also seen that the urine of a male lobster that has recently had an ego boost has a typical smell that is attractive to female lobsters. Hence, it is through a changed pheromone profile that a lobster can boast and inform the world that it has won a fight.

But why do lobsters use urine to communicate?

Well,  urine plays a pivotal role in the communication skills of lobsters because they contain the chemicals known as pheromones. Whenever they squirt their urine in the environment they are living in, a mixture of various messages. this urine also has a unique capacity for squirting up to a length of 7 lobsters.

A majority of the communication revolved around mating.  lobsters are solitary animals that love to you and stay alone for a very long period of time. They hate mixing up with other lobsters and whenever they do, they get into a fight. Soon after the fight the union of the winning lobster will smell differently than that of the losing lobster.

It is also interesting to know that the change in the smell of the winning lobster’s urine seems to be attracting and tempting for the females. Due to this, the winning lobster automatically gets the first pick to choose his female and mate with her. The male lobster will do nothing but squirt urine in the direction of the females. The one that likes the scent of this urine will move forward for the mate.

Do lobsters never produce any kind of sound at all?

No, this is not always true. there is another kind of European lobster that can produce a typical sound by rubbing its antennas with each other.  This produces a strange squeaky sound that is sometimes so loud that it can be heard from two miles of a distance underwater.  Scientists are still not sure about the purpose of this noise but they guess that it might be done to stay away from their predators.

While the above-mentioned information is true,  it is also true at the same time that no species of lobsters ever have vocal cords.  If you have ever heard of singing or talking lobsters, then that is definitely in the world of animated movies!

Can lobsters scream when they are boiled alive?

No, they don’t. Due to the lack of vocal cords, they are not able to produce sounds in a way that is similar to birds or mammals. The high-pitched sound that you can hear while boiling a lobster is certainly not the lobster screaming. Hence, a lobster that is boiled when it is already dead will emit a similar sound.

The sound that is heard will result from the air that comes out of the small holes in the body of an overheating lobster. This air especially arrives from the stomach and it is finally released through the mouth. It is roughly a similar thing by which whistles and flutes produce sound.

How do lobsters breathe?

Lobsters have the skill of breathing underwater by utilizing their gills that are hidden under their head. This gives usually works best when they are kept in seawater but lobsters have the capacity to remain alive for several weeks when they are kept under moist weather conditions or chilled. If lobsters are found in water bodies with less liquid, they can soon give up the oxygen and start suffocating.

Both female and male lobsters communicate through urine but both their intentions are different. While a male lobster boasts about its dominant nature and attracts a female through its urine, the female will use urine to soothe a male.